Your website can be one of the most effective marketing tools available for promoting your business. However, it’s a common misconception that, the moment your website goes live, thousands of people will immediately find it and purchase the products or services being offered.

In order to get to your website, people have to know it’s there – your website has to be promoted so it in turn will promote your business.

Tried and True Ways to Promote Your Website

Word of mouth: Tell everyone you know and tell them to tell everyone THEY know!
Print: Put your website address on everything you can – business cards, brochures, letterhead, print ads, the side of your delivery truck, the signature on your e-mail, and your company pens. Change your Yahoo or Hotmail email address to an address that includes your company URL.You would be amazed how many companies fail to take these simple but important steps.
Search Engines - Remember that it does not happen over night!

Search engines are still the number one way people get to where they are going on the web. And the number one search engine is Google.

Your website may not appear in the search engines for many months, let alone make it to the top three pages. So, an important thing to remember is to submit your website as soon as it is finished. DO NOT submit it until you have content. This may hamper your efforts for key search engine placement.

Once your website pages are completed and all of the content is incorporated, the site is submitted to the search engines. We will do the initial submission once the website is completed. Tracking of results and ongoing optimization can be arranged.

After submitting, you have to wait to see results. Search engines do not guarantee that you will be listed at all, although most sites eventually are. Sometimes it may take submitting more than once before a site is accepted. How long you have to wait depends on the search engine, but you should usually allow a number of months.

Search Engine Optimization Begins at the Design Phase

Not everyone will be in the number one position for the terms you think visitors will search for. But that does not mean that it is not worth the effort to try to get there.

There are things you can do to increase your ranking. There are basic items that can be addressed during the design phase of your website:

And most importantly, keep in mind that a website’s ranking in the search engines is never static. It can change from day to day, week to week. There are always competitors out there – and they, too, want their site to be higher than yours.
Other methods for getting website traffic

There are a variety of other methods out there for promoting your site. Some work, some don’t. Some are expensive, and some can be expensive scams. A few you may encounter:

* Sponsored links & Pay per click ads: Google and many other search engines offer “sponsored links”, basically paid ad space. Sometimes these ads work, sometimes they don’t. Most feedback seems to lean toward the latter. You may want to give it a shot and see what happens. This can be very costly.

* Reciprocal: Having other sites show a link to yours can be an effective way to help increase your ranking in the search engines, especially if the other site is very popular. Be aware, however, that simply having your site listed on a bunch of random web sites probably won’t help you much. It’s best to get listed on sites that have a similar topic. And you will usually be expected to put their link on your site too. Additionally, if you link to sites that don’t get much traffic it may negatively affect your own ranking. Be selective when linking to other sites.

* Submission services: Once you have a website, you will very likely start to receive solicitations for services that promise to bring a lot more traffic to your site. Be very cautious about these services. While it’s possible some of them may be able to bring you more traffic, a lot of them turn out to be a waste of time and money. No one can “guarantee” number one placement without purchasing it.